MACEDON — In a surprise decision made after an executive session of the Village Board of Trustees Wednesday night, the board has decided it will let its paid ambulance personnel go, reverting to a small all-volunteer squad.

The village and town have been embroiled in a simmering debate about ambulance service for some time, with the most recent significant event a lawsuit by the town against the state Department of Health after the Macedon Town Ambulance service was denied a Certificate of Need (CON) to provide service to village residents.

At the moment, the town does not have a certificate of need for the village; on the other hand, the village has one for the town.

But recently, the number of calls for the village ambulance had waned to the point where the monthly $5,700 required to pay paramedics to be on call during daylight hours Monday through Friday was not being offset by revenues for ambulance runs.

Mayor Marie Cramer estimated that $26,000 in billings had been made through the first six months of the year, while the pay for daytime paramedics was approximately $34,000.

“We needed to look at the best interests for the taxpayers,” she said. “This is very upsetting. We were a vibrant ambulance service, doing such a great job and financially stable. The town formed its own ambulance company, and they put roadblocks and barriers up.

“They sabotaged us,” she said. “Before they used to say. ‘We’re the town, and we spend this much money. They never wanted to add money to the service that was already existing to make it better. They made excuses of why they needed to form and duplicate a service. The fact is, each time they’ve formed a new service, it’s been more expensive to taxpayers. This is just so they can have control over the situation.”

One of the factors affecting the decision was the loss of trips to Walworth, she said. “We no longer get calls from there. They stopped all of a sudden. When the town duplicates our services — what the village already had and was fiscally sound at a reduced cost and served the village and the town — it confined us to only provide service to the village. How could we exist when we’re just confined to the village?

“The town has made people feel like we’re not doing business correctly. We are. If we weren’t, we’d be getting into trouble. The same things they complained that we did so badly, they’re doing the same things now. We must not have been so bad.”

She said the board had come to the decision “that you don’t pay for a service that is no longer viable just to keep it going. We’ll use our resources for other things that can be used to improve the community.”

Page 2 of 2 - Cramer said paid staff will be given 30-day notices, and after the 30-day period, ambulance calls will go first to Macedon village ambulance. If a crew is now available, Finger Lakes Ambulance or Rural Metro Ambulance will answer the call. If they are not available, the Macedon town ambulance will be called.

The Macedon village ambulance has 10 to 12 volunteers, Cramer said.

“We’ll be fine,” she said. “Palmyra ended up working with Finger Lakes.”

In the discussions Wednesday night, the trustees came to grips with an unfortunate reality.

“This is the first time ever that we have not been financially viable with our ambulance,” Cramer said. “The money came in, so we were never in the red. So now, what do you do? You don’t want to keep putting money into this, because you’re taking money away from other things.

“Before things got to the point where we were losing too much money, we had to make our decision,” she said. “This is going to be for the best. We’ll still have a service. The vote was unanimous. We felt the longer we waited, the more we were going to lose. We want to be fiscally responsible.”